James' essence/ a bit of Snape/Lily speculation WAS: Re: Choice and Essentialism

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 154011

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> > a_svirn:
> > Precisely. Also for me at least Sirius's statement rings hollow 
> > because he tries to find excuse for something inexcusable. It 
> > doesn't matter whether or not James hated the Dark Arts. His 
> > aversion to every thing Dark did not give him the licence to act 
as 
> > he did. The fact that Sirius brought James's hatred to the Dark 
Arts 
> > in such a context makes his claim less believable.
> >
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I think I finally found a decent enough analogy to illustrate the 
way 
> I think about it a bit better.
> 
> I am not sure I remember where you stand on Snape/Lily from the 
past 
> discussions. My position that it has a high possibility to make me 
> very ill, but I am more and more convinced that in some shape or 
form 
> it is going to come true.
> 
> So, imagine for the sake of argument that somebody who likes Snape 
( 
> not that many people on the list, maybe DD's portrait) or Snape 
> himself tells Harry that the reason he treated Harry in such way 
> during all those years is because that he loved Lily and blamed 
Harry 
> for Lily's death.
> 
> This would be offered as justification for what Snape did to 
Harry. Do 
> I BUY it as justification? Of course not, I will not be any less 
> disgusted by Snape's treatment of Harry if it turns out that he 
was 
> not mature enough to grasp that one year old child is NOT to blame 
for 
> the fact that his mother loved him enough to die for him.
> 
> BUT I would see no reason to doubt that the FACT that "Snape loved 
> Lily" is true ( if it would be offered in the book as true).
> 
> I will not buy it as justification, but I will buy it for the 
truth of 
> the matter asserted. I will buy it for the reasons of literary 
> ecomonomy too.
> 
> Same here - I don't see propensity to lie as Sirius character 
trait. I 
> do NOT buy it as justification, but I sure buy it as a factual 
> assertion.

a_svirn:
Well, you see, *facts* when it comes to such concepts as love and 
hate are very slippery things. If it turns out that Snape mistreated 
Harry because he had loved his mother I'd say it's not a "fact" but 
another justification. I mean, what kind of love is that? Clearly as 
twisted one as the logic of this explanation. Same with James's hate 
of the Dark Arts. You say you don't buy it as a justification of his 
actions. Fine, but thing is it is offered as just such a 
justification. Sirius wants Harry to believe that James acted as he 
did BECAUSE he hated the Dark Arts. But even Harry, as badly as he 
wants to be reassured, sees that this explanation won't wash. He 
acted as he did because he was a bully and he particularly despised 
Snape. So the truthful Sirius is really not quite straightforward 
here. 

Of course, James could have hated the Dark Arts, his bulling of 
Snape notwithstanding, just as Snape could have loved Lilly, his 
bulling of Harry notwithstanding. Yet it is really hard to believe 
that a sixteen-year-old James Potter gave any more thought on the 
subject of Dark Arts than his sixteen-year-old son ever did. (And he 
had much less incentive than Harry to think about such things.) And 
Harry, for one, does not *hate* the Dark Arts. Not least because 
like us he doesn't even know what they are really about. He hates 
persons – Snape, Bellatrix, Umbridge, Voldemort. He is not, however, 
above using Unforgivables on those he really hates. We saw him fling 
a Crucio at Bellatrix and an AK at Snape. Of course, we don't know 
for sure whether Unforgivables are Dark. They are, nevertheless, 
unforgivable, and yet Harry uses them. Maybe towards the end of the 
Book 7 he will come to hate *Arts* more than he hates persons, but 
right now it is not the case. By the same logic I'd say that the 
teenage James's hatred of the Dark Arts boiled down to the hatred of 
one Severus Snape – a slimy jit who knew more nasty curses than it 
was his fair share. 

Actually, I can readily believe that Sirius was the Marauder who 
really hated the Dark Arts. He was after all a Black who renounced 
his family heritage and hated with passion everything about the 
noble house of Black. And since his family was very much into the 
Dark Arts, he must have hated them with passion too. Personally, I 
see his explanation of the Pensive episode as a projection of his 
own feelings on James. Yet what does his hate of the Dark really 
mean? What are the Dark Arts for Sirius? I'd say it's everything to 
do with his parents' lifestyle, so to speak. Remember, during the 
purges at the Grimauld Place he destroyed all the portraits (he 
would have destroyed even the Pheneas's portrait if it weren't for 
Dumbledore) threw away everything down to some silver plate with the 
Black's coat of arms etc. Because for him it represented the Dark 
(as well as the Black). And remember how Harry almost beat Mundungus 
into a bloody pulp for stealing that same silver plate? Because for 
Harry it represented not the Dark of the Blacks, but a memento of 
Sirius.  

In other words, I'd say that just as Sirius did not hate some 
abstract Dark Arts – he hated his parents and everything they stood 
for, James did not hate Dark Arts either – he hated Snape. I should 
probably add "and everything he stood for", but thing is – we don't 
know just *what* did he stood for at sixteen.